November 9, 2022 • 42 mins
Lt. General Leonard Perroots faces down the single most critical decision of his career: to escalate, or not? He knows the situation is bad, but he has no idea just how bad. The man’s got the fate of the world in his hands. Produced by FilmNation and Pacific Electric Picture Co. in association with Gilded Audio.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's the middle of Exercise Able Archer when Leonard Perutz
receives an NSA report that Soviet Air Force planes in
East Germany are on high alert, at least one squadron
is likely loaded with real nuclear warheads, and his boss
is asking him to make a decision on whether the
US Air Force should escalate in kind. Should we put
(00:30):
our aircraft on alert, should we prepare our nuclear weapons
to escalate or not to escalate? That is the question.
I'm at helms and this is snafu Able Archer eighty three.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
General Perutz makes a really critical decision at this time,
but he's not making this decision based on any knowledge
about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This is Greg Elder, the chief historian of the DIA,
the Defense Intelligence Agency. Greg says, at the time that
Leonard Perudes was facing this critical decision, he didn't know
what was happening, not fully, he didn't know the depths
of Soviet paranoia that for years, under Operation Ryan, the
(01:21):
Soviets had been accumulating evidence of an imminent nuclear attack
on their proverbial tic tac toe board of Doom.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Seems the craziest of satires that you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
He didn't know the Soviets had intercepted a NATO message
approving a fictional nuclear strike upon the Soviet Union, who.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Was requesting use of twenty five nuclear weapons over.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
He didn't know that Ole Gordoyevski had received a telegram
from Moscow saying that the countdown to a nuclear attack
might have already begun under the guise of able archer
and you it was.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
A dramatic moment, and you Moscow was.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He didn't know that another secret agent, Rhyner Rupp, was
running to a phone booths to transmit an urgent message
via his super high tech spy calculator that NATO was
not planning to attack and that the KGB didn't believe him.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Might well have just been another form of deception.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
And he didn't know that Soviet missile commanders were on alert,
awaiting instructions to launch.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Are these guys about to attack us?
Speaker 6 (02:27):
Are they about to launch nuclear weapons?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Leonard Perutz knew none of this? How could he? We
hadn't made the podcast yet. All he knew was that
in East Germany, Soviet planes were on high alert and
at least one squadron likely had real nuclear weapons loaded
onto their aircrafts, and his boss was asking him a question.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
You know, Lenny, should we heighten our alert level?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
To escalate or not to escalate. If Leonard Berutz does
nothing and the Soviets carry out a nuclear attack, he
will have wasted precious minutes, minutes where NATO forces could
have prepared some sort of defense, minutes that could save lives.
(03:14):
But if he recommends to his boss to escalate and
it turns out the Soviets weren't actually planning a nuclear strike, well,
the very active escalation could spook them. It could be
seen as an act of aggression. It could cause the
Soviets to do the very thing he was trying to prevent,
launch a nuclear weapon. Once again, to escalate or not
to escalate.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And so he recommends to his four star commander that
we not escalate.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
In kind, he says, let's watch and wait.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He makes the determination that it's very possible the Soviets
may just be increasing their own alert and readiness level
because of their own concerns about our exercise and so
general perudes. Although making an uninformed decision in this case,
makes a thoroughly rational and what turned out to be
the correct decision.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
In a tense moment, Leonard Perudes didn't flex one single
military muscle. He didn't kick the tires and light the fires.
He left the fires unlit and the tires unkicked. Instead,
he aired on the side of caution.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Here is one of those examples where a US military
figure actually took the less hawkish approach, so to speak,
and that ultimately helps to alleviate the situation.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So on the night of November ninth, as Soviet leaders
sat in their bunkers watching to see what the United
States military would do next, they saw nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So that major indicator that they may have been looking
for ultimately wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
The next morning, the sun came up and there were
no mushroom clouds on the horizon, just regular clouds, big
floaty blops.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And so when able archers over, the Soviets wait a
few days and then essentially stand.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Down, anti climactic much. I know you came for explosions,
but hey, if there were explosions at this point in
the story, you'd be listening to this podcast from an
underground mole town living in a community that hadn't seen
the sun in forty years. Be grateful. Leonard Brutes fortuitously
(05:38):
made the decision that brought the Able Archer War scare
to a close, And the most absolutely insane part of
it is that he wasn't even aware of what he
was doing. The roots may have single handedly saved all
of humankind, and the dude has no clue exactly how
important that decision was. He was cool as a cukee.
(05:58):
His shift ends, he punches out, grabs a pint and
schnitzel at the pub, just another day at the office.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
That decision made is attributed to out of misinformations, even
described as that of ignorance. It was the right call,
thank god, but it was made out of ignorance of
all the other things that were going on.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We not knowing that there was any major significant issue
to begin with, go about our daily business, and it
isn't for some time that there's a full appreciation of
how bad things really were.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's November fourteenth, nineteen eighty three, three days after the
end of Able Archer. Reagan is just returning to DC
from his trip to Japan and Korea. He's exiting a
helicopter and walking towards a podium set up on the
White House lawn. Nancy is trailing behind him, holding the
hands of two small Korean children.
Speaker 8 (07:01):
Nancy was outsight seeing or probably even shopping for souvenirs,
and knowing Nancy as well as I do, I wasn't
surprised when I came home and found that she had
two little Korean friends.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
To be clear, these two children were being brought back
to the United States for medical care, not because Nancy
kidnapped them or something. Anyway, Reagan's in good spirits. He's
flashing his classic Hollywood smile, cracking jokes in this ten
minute speech. He doesn't mention the Soviet Union, and if
he has any inkling of what happened during Able Archer
a few days prior, he doesn't let.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
On, God bless you and God bless this wonderful country.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Thank you, you wipe out here.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
I translate pretty well, got eight hours sleep on the
boat rally.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But the truth is, in this very moment, Reagan wouldn't
have known much about Able Archer, even if he was
totally up to speed. US intelligence didn't know shit at
this point, just that over in East Germany a squadron
of planes were on high alert and they may have
loaded nuclear warheads. That information made it to Leonard Perut's desk. Sure,
but who knows if it got all the way to Reagan.
(08:19):
If only we could know what was in his head,
if only there was some document that was a written
record of his actual thoughts. November eighteenth, nineteen eighty three.
I feel the Soviets are so defense minded, so paranoid
about being attacked, that, without being in any way soft
(08:41):
on them, we ought to tell them no one here
has any intention of doing anything like that. What the
hi double hockey sticks have they got that anyone would want? Okay,
putting aside my terrible Reagan impression, he really did write that,
so something must have prompted him to ruminate on the
(09:03):
Soviet's nuclear paranoia. Nonetheless, that didn't stop what came next.
George is going on ABC right after its big nuclear
bomb film Sunday Night. We know it's anti nuke propaganda,
but we're going to take it over and say it
shows why we must keep on doing what we're doing. Yep.
(09:26):
This is when Reagan sent George Schultz on national television
to tell an absolutely terrified American public that our nuclear
policy was working perfectly.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
The successful policy of the United States.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, you know what this calls for thanks Day after Lady.
The thing is, even though Able Archer is over, it
doesn't mean that we're safe. It doesn't mean the Soviets
have stopped to being afraid of a surprise nuclear attack.
(10:03):
Think about it. If there's a guy who keeps saying
he might literally kick your ass, and then he starts
pulling his foot back for a literal kick, and you
think this is it, He's gonna literally kick my ass,
but then it turns out he's just practicing for his
Rockhets audition. Well that doesn't mean that he won't still
someday take a leave of absence from the Rockets to
come back and kick you in the ass. Guys, I
(10:24):
think we have our submission for this year's Perfect Analogy Awards. Anyway,
the point is the Soviets were still on edge. The
day after George Schultz reassured a terrified American public that
the US nuclear policy was definitely, absolutely totally a safe bet,
(10:46):
the Soviets reached out with an offer. They said, we'll
destroy half of our intermediate range nuclear missiles, the ones
that could target Europe, if NATO will cancel the euro missiles.
The Reagan administration declined the offer, saying that the conditions
of the agreement were unacceptable, as if rubbing salt in
(11:06):
the wound. Those euro missiles were officially installed in Europe
mere days later in response, and drop off scheduled the
deployment of new seaborn nuclear missiles pointed at the US
and additional nukes aimed at Western Europe.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
If the President doesn't even know that there's something going
on to be concerned about, that, that's a problem, that's
a failure that has to be addressed.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And yet, despite Reagan's televised message saying that the administration's
policy was perfect, absolutely flawless, in the background, they would
begin working on an extremely subtle shift in their Soviet strategy.
It wouldn't be a policy change per se. They wouldn't
cancel the euro missiles, they wouldn't stop building SDI, and
(11:56):
they wouldn't stop being tough, but they'd be less adversarial.
They'd attempt to let the Soviets know that nobody has
any intention of nuking them.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
Hugh.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
That charmingly folksy Ivan and Anya speech.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would
be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
She also teaches music.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
They might even have decided they were all going to
get together.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
For dinner some evening soon, but apparently Reagan didn't feel
any urgency to display this new softer side. The speech
was originally scheduled for just before Christmas, but Reagan delayed
it for nearly a month because someone very important advised
him to Who was it. Why don't you take a
guess whose advice would President of the United States Ronald
(12:43):
Reagan heed in regards to delaying the Soviet Friendship speech
in the weeks after almost getting nuked. The Joint chiefs
of Staff, Nope, The Secretary General of the UN Nope,
Mother Teresa. If only it was Nancy. Reagan's astrologer, a
San Francisco woman named Joan Quigley. Anyway, while Reagan was
(13:10):
waiting for Joan Quigley's permission to extend an olive branch
to the Soviet Union, the US intelligence community got some
unwelcome news.
Speaker 7 (13:18):
I think it was two or three weeks before actual
other reporting came in that started to peak his concerns.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Here's John Perutz again talking about his dad, Leonard Perutz.
According to John, on December second, nineteen eighty three. A
few weeks after Leonard made the decision to do nothing
during Able Archer, a new NSA report landed on his desk.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
That indicated that their alert level had been much larger
than we had assumed.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Hey, funny story. Remember that Able Archer exercise that ended
with US fake nuking Thozovits Well, you're totally gonna laugh
at this. I mean, it's so ridiculous. But anyway, it
turns out the Soviets alert during Abel Archer was just
a tad bigger than we thought. It wasn't just a
(14:08):
few planes in East Germany. It was all the units
of the Soviet fourth Air Army. The alert was ordered
by the Chief of the Soviet Air Forces, and the
alert quote included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons
end quote. All right, I want to explain what this means.
This is hundreds of airplanes potentially loaded with nukes, not
(14:31):
just a squadron. We're talking potentially the end of the
world number of airplanes. It's a pretty big fucking difference.
Speaker 7 (14:40):
Extraordinarily unusual in alarming events. From an intelligien standpoint.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Leonardprutz was, well, let's just say a little shaken by
this news.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Hmmm, wow, that would have been interesting to know at
the time.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Got to hope he wasn't drinking coffee when he read
that report, because he would have had the mother of
all spit takes. He was wondering, why the hell is
he just finding out about this now? This was information
that he needed weeks ago. He realized he had made
a decision that could have had catastrophic consequences with only
(15:16):
a tiny fraction of the picture, and even though it
turned out to be the right decision, he was pissed.
Leonard Perutz got on a soapbox about abel Archer. He
complained to any of his colleagues who would listen.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
He wasn't certain that that the community, the intelligence community,
had looked closely enough to figure out how we could
get better from this scenario.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
But nobody listened to him. They just didn't think it
was that big of a deal because even with this
new information, US intelligence still didn't know the full picture,
and they never would have if it wasn't for one
Oleg Gordievski.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Do you remember meeting the British at any point during
abel Archer exercise?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
I think I met them in the end of the
able Archer. Yes, I spoke to the to Joe Scarlets
about EVERYTHINGE Pichet experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's Gordievsky. After Able Archer. Sometime in November nineteen eighty three,
he met with his I six handler, a man with
a name right out of a spy novel, John Scarlet.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Britain's an operational officer.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Wow, Gordy, fast and loose with the compliments. All of
a sudden, he handed Scarlet the urgent flash telegram he
had just received from Moscow.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
It said the American exercise may be preparation to a
sudden new play attack. When I told Joe Scarlet for
him it was important.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Soon word that a nuclear war scare may have just
unfolded under exercise. Able Archer landed on the desk of
the Iron Lady herself, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To her credit,
when she did hear what Gordievski had told John Scarlett,
she was definitely spooked. Hopefully she wasn't sipping tea at
the time, or she might have experienced the Queen mother
(17:11):
of all spit takes. See how I made a call back,
but I made a British.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
As it illized that's was a serious so the Russians
are afraid of something. They're afraid of the Strategic Defense Initiative,
and they're afraid of the ideological speeches by Reagan than shoots.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
In March of nineteen eighty four, Thatcher sent her ambassador
to Washington to communicate a warning to the US government.
Her message was this, Reagan needs to cool it with
the nukes. The Soviets nearly started a war because of
this shit. The meeting apparently did not go well. The
ambassador wouldn't tell the Americans exactly who their secret source was,
so the Reagan rep said, we're gonna keep doing peace
(17:59):
through stre thank you very much. But fine, we'll have
the CIA look into your concerns about this silly little
Able Archer stuff, since you've got you old Nikas in
a twist about it. Now, given everything we know about
Able Archer, it's pretty damn surprising that when the CIA
did look into it, they didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 9 (18:27):
So here we have all right, So this is implications
of recent Soviet military political activities, and this is the
first CIA report on what happened during the war Scan
and what happened during Able Archer.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
You remember Nate Jones are Able Archer sleuth. The document
he's holding is called the SNIE, another acronym shocker. It
stands for Special National Intelligence Estimate. It's the CIA's response
to the British request to look into Able Archer. This
top secret report was written in May of nineteen eighty four.
(19:04):
It's about six pages long. In the document, the CIA
analysts list everything unusual they've observed the Soviet Union doing
over the past six months. They talk about the construction
of new missile sites, big military exercises, and of course
the fact that during Exercise Able Archer, the Soviets escalated
their nuclear readiness. But despite listing all of these concerning things.
Speaker 9 (19:27):
Overall, our conclusion is that it wasn't very dangerous and
it was not a very big deal.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Hmm. You may be wondering, like me and anybody else
with the brain cell, how exactly is this not a
big deal? Did you watch the day after? I bet
when you're reduced to a cloud of dust drifting over
a radioactive wasteland, then you'd call it a big deal.
There's only one paragraph that details the Soviet military reaction,
(19:57):
specifically to Able Archer, about those planes in East Germany
and Poland going on high alert. So how did the
CIA explain it.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
The theory is that the Soviets are doing a massive
propaganda campaign to trick the West into thinking that they're
very scared of a preemptive nuclear strike, but that they
weren't really scared.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yes, of course, more mind games and the age of
nuclear weapons love that for us.
Speaker 9 (20:29):
The thinking goes that this campaign was to make the
West stop deploying the new missiles to Europe. Is the
reason for the campaign. That's what some people believed.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You can tell what Nate makes of this theory, but
it wasn't altogether implausible. The idea was if the Soviet
leaders were very public about their fear of nuclear war
with the United States, then American and European citizens would
freak out. They would call on NATO to take the
Persian two and Cruise missiles out of Europe, and that
would be a win for the Soviets, some successful mind fuckery.
(21:05):
The SNIE report is confident in this propaganda theory. They
don't waiver. They even say, and I quote, we cannot
at this point conduct a detailed examination of how the
Soviets perceived recent NATO military activities. But even so, we
are confident the Soviets do not fear a military clash
with the United.
Speaker 9 (21:23):
States, so I think they might be writing to a conclusion.
So the conclusion is that there's no real danger. Reagan's
policy is working, putting more nuclear weapons into Europe is
a good idea, and the Soviet reaction to able Archer
and the broader war scare can't be real. So therefore
(21:44):
it's just propaganda.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Now this report, it's talking about what the CIA has
seen the Soviet military do. It doesn't cite Gordievski's account
of the KGB flash telegram that he says he received,
and apparently that's because the CIA doesn't know exactly who
Gordievski is. Six can't just say, yeah, we got a
guy on the inside. His name is Oleg. He wears
(22:09):
a fake go tee and a wig, because there was
always the chance that Oleg's double agent super secret status
could get back to Russia if the CIA had a
mole oo foreshadowing. So the CIA doesn't consider Gordievsky's story
when they write the SNIE. Maybe they thought the source
(22:32):
was a plant. Maybe they thought he was just another
victim of the Soviet leader's propaganda or and this is
the explanation that involves the least amount of tinker tailor
shadow game hall of Mirror thinking maybe they knew that
his story made them look really, really bad. And I
only say that because of what happens next. After the
(22:55):
CIA writes this report, they need to share it with
their NATO allies since they all participated Enable Archer together.
Nate found this version of the report filed in the
State Department archives. So there are two versions of this.
Speaker 9 (23:10):
There's the version the CIA initially put out, and then
I foia the State Department and got its version, and
its version is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Nate knew there was a small chance that the State
Department's version of this document would be slightly different. Maybe
there'd be fewer redactions, or maybe there'd be some other
able Archer clue. When Nate received the State Department's version
of the SNIE, he ripped the envelope open. He quickly
(23:41):
scanned through the document and was shocked not at what
he found but what he didn't find.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
But in this version that they shared with their allies,
they cut out all mention of able Archer and so
if you compare it too, you see where the CIA
version talks about Able Archer. The version of the State
Department shared with the British and NATO allies just cutting
out and deleting the most dangerous part of the war,
scare Able Archer.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
The side by side comparison is pretty wild. Word for word,
the entire document is exactly the same until you get
to the paragraph about Able Archer in the State Department version.
It's just gone erased.
Speaker 9 (24:22):
It Actually, it comes across as kind of absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Absurd is a good word here. Let's break this down.
The British asked the CIA to check out Able Archer.
The CIA finds evidence of a Soviet military reaction to
Able Archer, but decides not to share it, going as
far as scrubbing all mention of Able Archer in the
report they give back to the British. That's not just absurd,
that's weird. And the obvious question becomes, why did they
(24:50):
do that?
Speaker 9 (24:52):
Well, I think to control the narrative, so to speak.
I think every author had their own point of view
that they wanted to convey, and they probably thought it
was true, and they took the facts that they had
from their intelligence and twisted the conclusions about the facts
to advocate what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The CIA, the analysts who are involved in that estimate
have a vested interest in protecting their own reputations. Nobody
wants to say they got it wrong, right. I don't
want to turn that into like some great conspiracy theory.
That's just that's human nature. It's really hard to get
people to re examine their opinions at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Everyone has a dog in the fight, and those stakes
really come down to this question of whether the people
who were charged with managing the arms race, whether those
people were competent and responsible, or whether they were just
like everybody else and bumbling their way through. And so
(26:01):
there is an enormous incentive for people to say it
wasn't that bad, because if it was that bad, then
that discredits their claimed expertise.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And we all know there is literally nothing worse in
the world than having your expertise discredited. I mean, I
can't think of anything worse. I mean, it seems like
there should be something, I just can't think of it.
(26:36):
Oh well, able archer would become a hot button issue
and create a divide in the intelligence community. It would
separate people into two passionate camps, people who bought into
the propaganda theory and people who believed that able Archer
was a catastrophic near miss. The official CIA party line
(26:57):
was the propaganda theory. That thing really had happened. They
were happy to shove it under the rug. Big fuck up. Nope,
not us. We never make mistakes. And I know you're
going to try to bring up the Iran thing and
the Congo thing and the Chili thing, but we're not
talking about those right now. But walking through the halls
of the Pentagon was a particular US intelligence official who
(27:19):
just wasn't buying the propaganda theory, propaganda, and he would
not remain quiet.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
My father was a unique man. He was full of
energy and passion and love.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This is John Perutz again talking about his father, Lieutenant
General Leonard Perutz.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
He was a great man, guys. I mean I miss
him every day.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
John, like his father, is an intelligence officer. He works
at the DIA.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
As the director of the Defense Debriefing Service DIA.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
I'm responsible for.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
A global force posture that conducts strategic debriefings and interrogation
missions for DIA. It's human intelligence and beyond.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
That I can't really tell you a whole lot more.
I'm sorry, that's okay, John.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
A few years after Able Archer, Perutz was home from Germany,
now the director of the DIA, and one day he
was told a story of a mysterious MI six source
who claimed that in nineteen eighty three, the Soviet leadership
believed NATO was using a military exercise as cover for
a nuclear attack.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
When he substantiated it, I mean then for Manny Perutes,
the wheels came off, he said, you know, you got
to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Peruts was stunned and furious. This was the side of
the able Archer store. Sorry, he had never even known
KGB paranoia, fear and Operation Ryan. Put that together with
what Perots knew about Soviet military action, and you've got
yourself a saucy tango with nuclear armageddon. Oh. Lenny went
(29:18):
up to his attic, got his old soap box and
plopped it down right in the middle of the Pentagon.
He was like, guys, we have got to look at
this again. We didn't get it right the first time.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
He was making his point clear that we, you know,
let's make sure we learn from this, you know, and
people didn't want to hear it. Some had been on
record clearly saying, hey, that Sovie has really fear never
feared us. We've looked at it more than once, and
we stand by our view that they didn't fear first
strike by the United States, and I don't doubt for
(29:54):
one minute that was their professional belief.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
But this time Leonard Peruts wasn't going to let it go.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
I think at that point, Dad, it said, you know,
I got it. I'm leaving. I gotta go on record.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
When Leonard Perutz retired from his job as the director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency in January nineteen eighty nine,
he did so with guns ablazing. He wrote a letter
his final parting shot. Listen here, you motherfuckers. Now, I'm joking.
Obviously this is the honorable Leonard Peruts after all, But
(30:32):
the letter is badass. Leonard wrote his whole story. He says,
here's what happened during Abel Archer. I didn't have the
information I needed. If I did have it, I'm not
sure what decision I would have made. Does that not
scare you all as much as it scares me? He
ends the letter by asking an ominous question, what would
have happened that day. If I had made the other decision.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
I read the letter that my father wrote, just saying, hey,
what if, And I don't think he contended that nuclear
war It certainly would have happened, But the notion that
we would have inadvertently increased the likelihood that it could
happen was the problem. You might want to look into
this yet again, because it's too important not to.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
On the day of his retirement, he blasted this memo
out to anybody and everybody who had the security clearance
to read it, and truth be told, most of the
recipients were not interested. The institutional wisdom was let sleeping
able archers lie, if you get my meaning. But finally
he caught someone's attention.
Speaker 9 (31:40):
Essentially, that memo spurred the PIFFYAB of presidential Organization to
undertake this large, very large task.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
That's Nate Jones again, ever, sleuthing behind the able archer scenes.
PIFYAB is another wonderful acronym short for President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory.
The PIFYAB is a panel of citizens appointed by the President,
who by now was George Bush Senior. It's important to
note these people are not intelligence professionals. They're not even
(32:11):
necessarily government people. They're an oversight committee of political scientists, historians,
and lawyers who get special security clearance to access all
the government's juicy secrets. When they received Leonard Perutz's letter
in nineteen eighty nine, they read it with as much
urgency as Perots had written it. They were terrified by
the tale he told, and since they were unencumbered by
(32:33):
CIA politics, they were going to investigate able Archer properly.
This time, the PIFYAB would spend a year digging into
able Archer. They'd analyze every report, interviewed dozens of people involved,
and compile it all together in a highly classified, one
hundred page report build to the brim with government secrets.
(32:59):
The study was highly restricted, regardless of security clearance. Only
those who absolutely needed to know got to read it.
But even intelligence professionals love a little juicy GUS people
started whispering. The rumor was that this PIFYAB report was
really critical of operational mistakes, and that it confirmed, contrary
(33:19):
to the SNIE, that we may have been frighteningly close
to an all out war in nineteen eighty three. And
even though almost nobody could actually read the Pifyab report.
This rumor mill elevated it to a kind of mythical status. Now,
certain intelligence officials were questioning the conventional wisdom. If the
(33:40):
Piffy Ab allegedly said that Able Archer was a disaster,
maybe it really was a near miss. Now at this point,
Leonard Prutz was running up and down the halls of
the CIA screaming, I told you so well. I mean,
I can't verify that he actually did that, but it's
what I would have done, so I guess I'm just projecting.
Speaker 10 (34:00):
I had heard of it in passing, but I'd never
gotten into it any depth.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
I just knew that people talked about it.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Listeners, Meet Ben Fisher.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
My name is Ben Fisher.
Speaker 10 (34:13):
I shd arts the German spelling, and I worked for
the Central Intelligence Agency for over thirty years.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Ben wasn't involved in the CIA's initial Able Archer investigations
at that time. He had a very different job at
the CIA.
Speaker 10 (34:30):
I was undercover for a number of years, about fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Pretty exciting. Right in the nineties. Been left the undercover
world for a much quieter life as a CIA historian,
and that's when he decided to look into Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
There were differences of opinion.
Speaker 10 (34:46):
The issue had never really been resolved to everyone's satisfaction,
and so that's what I set out to do.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
When I started the research.
Speaker 10 (34:57):
Colleague of mine got me aside and he said, I
want you to to know that this is a very
controversial issue within the intelligence community. That's not just the CIA,
that's also the Pentagon State Department, and people staked out
diametrically opposed opinions on this episode. And he said, no
(35:18):
matter what you find, you're going to offend one side
or the other, and it's going to hurt your career.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
That didn't really FaZe Ben as far as he was concerned.
As an historian. He was already in the sunset of
his career.
Speaker 10 (35:30):
Which of course is the beauty of being on the
history staff. You don't have anything to risk. You can
reach your.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Own conclusions and write it up and let people deal
with it.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Ben began his research knowing that he eventually planned to
publish his work publicly. He was careful to use only
declassified sources. He did not read the PIFIAD report, but
even so he was terrified by what he found.
Speaker 10 (35:57):
It was very disturbing, and it led me to believe
that this was a very serious matter.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Ben didn't think his CIA colleagues had gotten it right
in the eighties. From what he could tell, the CIA
had underestimated the Soviets fear. It was very possible Able
Archer was a big deal. After all.
Speaker 10 (36:18):
I will say that on several occasions, people much higher
up the food chain than I called me up or
asked me to come and see them, and they said,
I want you to know that I thought this warscare
thing was a bunch of nonsense for a long time,
and then I read your monograph and I decided I've
changed my mind. I think it was a serious matter
and it deserves more attention than it has received.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
The CIA published Ben's work in nineteen ninety eight. They
held a conference invited academics and intelligence officials. The story
of the Able Archer war scare left the obscurity of
classified government archives. Now it was.
Speaker 10 (36:56):
Public, and a lot of people then decided to take
a second look at the issue. And so I think
that I take credit for encouraging other people to go
beyond where I was able to go.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
By the early two thousands, the Able Archer myth had
gone through a transformation of sorts a glow up, as
the kids say. Between whispers about the PIFYABS findings and
Ben Fisher's work, the propaganda theory receded into the background.
The intelligence community had come around. Many officials in the
US government now believed that able Archer was a truly
(37:33):
dangerous near miss. Plus, any CIA folks who had been
in power during Abel Archer had long since retired or
passed away. Basically, by the two thousands, nobody was trying
to diminish the importance of Able Archer. Not anymore. But
the thing about mysteries is that they have a tendency
(37:56):
to linger unless there's one hundred percent in controvertible, undeniable proof.
Some needling sleuth with a taste for CIA intrigue is
sure to come along and start asking questions again. Yep,
I'm talking about my main man, Nate Jones, or, as
I like to call him, Freedom of Information Act Guy.
Speaker 9 (38:18):
The government's telling me, no, you can have the documents,
and I want the documents.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Does that sound like the kind of guy who's gonna
let the piffy ab the holy Grail of able Archer
reportage sit untouched in a dusty Manila folder. Somewhere forever,
of course, not so.
Speaker 9 (38:34):
This one was a slobber knocker, just a big, long,
nasty fight.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Nate knew the piffy AB could contain information that wasn't
found in Fisher's reports or the SNIE, information that may
lay the mystery of able Archer to rest once and
for all. He had to get it. It wouldn't take
long for the Pifyab report to become Nate Jones white Whale.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
I filed a foyer for that pretty quickly. It went nowhere, weighted, weighted, weighted.
That filed my other foyas, and eventually I started bugging
them and calling them and saying what is going on?
And they kind of politely but kind of not said no, listen,
(39:23):
we're not doing one review. It has to be reviewed
by essentially six seven eight agencies.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Something to understand about the Pipeab report. It was special
because it was comprehensive. It used reports and sources from
more than a half a dozen agencies, and that, of
course made it nearly impossible to declassify.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
There's diplomatic sources, there's satellite sources, there's Stigan sources, there's
CIA sources. It's hard enough to get for example, one
five page document with only CIA equities reviewed.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
That's years, so you.
Speaker 9 (39:58):
Can imagine one hundred document with equities of seven agencies.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
It's not that the pitheapp wouldn't get declassified, it's just
that it might take so long that by the time
it was declassified, Nate would very likely be dead.
Speaker 9 (40:12):
So we were in big trouble.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But Nate wasn't the only one interested in the mythical
and mysterious events of Able Archer. Other historians were probing too,
But instead of trying to crack open the US government's files,
they were looking east.
Speaker 11 (40:33):
I was excited to try to find, you know, even
more of the picture on how we all almost perished.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And I am extremely excited to tell you what they found.
Speaker 11 (40:45):
I got my hands on a exercise report on the
entire Autumn Forge series of exercises.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Oh wow, I mean this is it.
Speaker 11 (40:54):
This is you know, this is the document. Let's see
how close we all got to blowing ourselves up.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
That's next time on Snaffo. While Nate tries to get
his pause on the Piffy App, We're gonna head over
to the Soviet block with some historical sleuthing that raises
some critical questions about those spies, oh Leg Gordievski and
Ryn are Rupp, who saved the day during Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
I won't say he's intentionally aligned.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
He might just be mistaken, or you might remember it
a certain way. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film,
Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with
Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino.
Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. It's
executive produced by me Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
(41:43):
Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
That's Fucking true story.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
This episode was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing
from me Elliott Kalen and Whitney Donaldson. Olivia Kenny is
our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional
research in fact Check by Charles Richter, Engineering and technical
direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by
Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chug. Special thanks to
(42:10):
Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstad.
It's the middle of Exercise Able Archer when Leonard Perutz
receives an NSA report that Soviet Air Force planes in
East Germany are on high alert, at least one squadron
is likely loaded with real nuclear warheads, and his boss
is asking him to make a decision on whether the
US Air Force should escalate in kind. Should we put
(00:30):
our aircraft on alert, should we prepare our nuclear weapons
to escalate or not to escalate? That is the question.
I'm at helms and this is snafu Able Archer eighty three.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
General Perutz makes a really critical decision at this time,
but he's not making this decision based on any knowledge
about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This is Greg Elder, the chief historian of the DIA,
the Defense Intelligence Agency. Greg says, at the time that
Leonard Perudes was facing this critical decision, he didn't know
what was happening, not fully, he didn't know the depths
of Soviet paranoia that for years, under Operation Ryan, the
(01:21):
Soviets had been accumulating evidence of an imminent nuclear attack
on their proverbial tic tac toe board of Doom.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Seems the craziest of satires that you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
He didn't know the Soviets had intercepted a NATO message
approving a fictional nuclear strike upon the Soviet Union, who.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Was requesting use of twenty five nuclear weapons over.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
He didn't know that Ole Gordoyevski had received a telegram
from Moscow saying that the countdown to a nuclear attack
might have already begun under the guise of able archer
and you it was.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
A dramatic moment, and you Moscow was.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He didn't know that another secret agent, Rhyner Rupp, was
running to a phone booths to transmit an urgent message
via his super high tech spy calculator that NATO was
not planning to attack and that the KGB didn't believe him.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Might well have just been another form of deception.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
And he didn't know that Soviet missile commanders were on alert,
awaiting instructions to launch.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Are these guys about to attack us?
Speaker 6 (02:27):
Are they about to launch nuclear weapons?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Leonard Perutz knew none of this? How could he? We
hadn't made the podcast yet. All he knew was that
in East Germany, Soviet planes were on high alert and
at least one squadron likely had real nuclear weapons loaded
onto their aircrafts, and his boss was asking him a question.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
You know, Lenny, should we heighten our alert level?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
To escalate or not to escalate. If Leonard Berutz does
nothing and the Soviets carry out a nuclear attack, he
will have wasted precious minutes, minutes where NATO forces could
have prepared some sort of defense, minutes that could save lives.
(03:14):
But if he recommends to his boss to escalate and
it turns out the Soviets weren't actually planning a nuclear strike, well,
the very active escalation could spook them. It could be
seen as an act of aggression. It could cause the
Soviets to do the very thing he was trying to prevent,
launch a nuclear weapon. Once again, to escalate or not
to escalate.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And so he recommends to his four star commander that
we not escalate.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
In kind, he says, let's watch and wait.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He makes the determination that it's very possible the Soviets
may just be increasing their own alert and readiness level
because of their own concerns about our exercise and so
general perudes. Although making an uninformed decision in this case,
makes a thoroughly rational and what turned out to be
the correct decision.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
In a tense moment, Leonard Perudes didn't flex one single
military muscle. He didn't kick the tires and light the fires.
He left the fires unlit and the tires unkicked. Instead,
he aired on the side of caution.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Here is one of those examples where a US military
figure actually took the less hawkish approach, so to speak,
and that ultimately helps to alleviate the situation.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So on the night of November ninth, as Soviet leaders
sat in their bunkers watching to see what the United
States military would do next, they saw nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So that major indicator that they may have been looking
for ultimately wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
The next morning, the sun came up and there were
no mushroom clouds on the horizon, just regular clouds, big
floaty blops.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And so when able archers over, the Soviets wait a
few days and then essentially stand.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Down, anti climactic much. I know you came for explosions,
but hey, if there were explosions at this point in
the story, you'd be listening to this podcast from an
underground mole town living in a community that hadn't seen
the sun in forty years. Be grateful. Leonard Brutes fortuitously
(05:38):
made the decision that brought the Able Archer War scare
to a close, And the most absolutely insane part of
it is that he wasn't even aware of what he
was doing. The roots may have single handedly saved all
of humankind, and the dude has no clue exactly how
important that decision was. He was cool as a cukee.
(05:58):
His shift ends, he punches out, grabs a pint and
schnitzel at the pub, just another day at the office.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
That decision made is attributed to out of misinformations, even
described as that of ignorance. It was the right call,
thank god, but it was made out of ignorance of
all the other things that were going on.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
We not knowing that there was any major significant issue
to begin with, go about our daily business, and it
isn't for some time that there's a full appreciation of
how bad things really were.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's November fourteenth, nineteen eighty three, three days after the
end of Able Archer. Reagan is just returning to DC
from his trip to Japan and Korea. He's exiting a
helicopter and walking towards a podium set up on the
White House lawn. Nancy is trailing behind him, holding the
hands of two small Korean children.
Speaker 8 (07:01):
Nancy was outsight seeing or probably even shopping for souvenirs,
and knowing Nancy as well as I do, I wasn't
surprised when I came home and found that she had
two little Korean friends.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
To be clear, these two children were being brought back
to the United States for medical care, not because Nancy
kidnapped them or something. Anyway, Reagan's in good spirits. He's
flashing his classic Hollywood smile, cracking jokes in this ten
minute speech. He doesn't mention the Soviet Union, and if
he has any inkling of what happened during Able Archer
a few days prior, he doesn't let.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
On, God bless you and God bless this wonderful country.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Thank you, you wipe out here.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
I translate pretty well, got eight hours sleep on the
boat rally.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But the truth is, in this very moment, Reagan wouldn't
have known much about Able Archer, even if he was
totally up to speed. US intelligence didn't know shit at
this point, just that over in East Germany a squadron
of planes were on high alert and they may have
loaded nuclear warheads. That information made it to Leonard Perut's desk. Sure,
but who knows if it got all the way to Reagan.
(08:19):
If only we could know what was in his head,
if only there was some document that was a written
record of his actual thoughts. November eighteenth, nineteen eighty three.
I feel the Soviets are so defense minded, so paranoid
about being attacked, that, without being in any way soft
(08:41):
on them, we ought to tell them no one here
has any intention of doing anything like that. What the
hi double hockey sticks have they got that anyone would want? Okay,
putting aside my terrible Reagan impression, he really did write that,
so something must have prompted him to ruminate on the
(09:03):
Soviet's nuclear paranoia. Nonetheless, that didn't stop what came next.
George is going on ABC right after its big nuclear
bomb film Sunday Night. We know it's anti nuke propaganda,
but we're going to take it over and say it
shows why we must keep on doing what we're doing. Yep.
(09:26):
This is when Reagan sent George Schultz on national television
to tell an absolutely terrified American public that our nuclear
policy was working perfectly.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
The successful policy of the United States.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, you know what this calls for thanks Day after Lady.
The thing is, even though Able Archer is over, it
doesn't mean that we're safe. It doesn't mean the Soviets
have stopped to being afraid of a surprise nuclear attack.
(10:03):
Think about it. If there's a guy who keeps saying
he might literally kick your ass, and then he starts
pulling his foot back for a literal kick, and you
think this is it, He's gonna literally kick my ass,
but then it turns out he's just practicing for his
Rockhets audition. Well that doesn't mean that he won't still
someday take a leave of absence from the Rockets to
come back and kick you in the ass. Guys, I
(10:24):
think we have our submission for this year's Perfect Analogy Awards. Anyway,
the point is the Soviets were still on edge. The
day after George Schultz reassured a terrified American public that
the US nuclear policy was definitely, absolutely totally a safe bet,
(10:46):
the Soviets reached out with an offer. They said, we'll
destroy half of our intermediate range nuclear missiles, the ones
that could target Europe, if NATO will cancel the euro missiles.
The Reagan administration declined the offer, saying that the conditions
of the agreement were unacceptable, as if rubbing salt in
(11:06):
the wound. Those euro missiles were officially installed in Europe
mere days later in response, and drop off scheduled the
deployment of new seaborn nuclear missiles pointed at the US
and additional nukes aimed at Western Europe.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
If the President doesn't even know that there's something going
on to be concerned about, that, that's a problem, that's
a failure that has to be addressed.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And yet, despite Reagan's televised message saying that the administration's
policy was perfect, absolutely flawless, in the background, they would
begin working on an extremely subtle shift in their Soviet strategy.
It wouldn't be a policy change per se. They wouldn't
cancel the euro missiles, they wouldn't stop building SDI, and
(11:56):
they wouldn't stop being tough, but they'd be less adversarial.
They'd attempt to let the Soviets know that nobody has
any intention of nuking them.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
Hugh.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
That charmingly folksy Ivan and Anya speech.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would
be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
She also teaches music.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
They might even have decided they were all going to
get together.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
For dinner some evening soon, but apparently Reagan didn't feel
any urgency to display this new softer side. The speech
was originally scheduled for just before Christmas, but Reagan delayed
it for nearly a month because someone very important advised
him to Who was it. Why don't you take a
guess whose advice would President of the United States Ronald
(12:43):
Reagan heed in regards to delaying the Soviet Friendship speech
in the weeks after almost getting nuked. The Joint chiefs
of Staff, Nope, The Secretary General of the UN Nope,
Mother Teresa. If only it was Nancy. Reagan's astrologer, a
San Francisco woman named Joan Quigley. Anyway, while Reagan was
(13:10):
waiting for Joan Quigley's permission to extend an olive branch
to the Soviet Union, the US intelligence community got some
unwelcome news.
Speaker 7 (13:18):
I think it was two or three weeks before actual
other reporting came in that started to peak his concerns.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Here's John Perutz again talking about his dad, Leonard Perutz.
According to John, on December second, nineteen eighty three. A
few weeks after Leonard made the decision to do nothing
during Able Archer, a new NSA report landed on his desk.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
That indicated that their alert level had been much larger
than we had assumed.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Hey, funny story. Remember that Able Archer exercise that ended
with US fake nuking Thozovits Well, you're totally gonna laugh
at this. I mean, it's so ridiculous. But anyway, it
turns out the Soviets alert during Abel Archer was just
a tad bigger than we thought. It wasn't just a
(14:08):
few planes in East Germany. It was all the units
of the Soviet fourth Air Army. The alert was ordered
by the Chief of the Soviet Air Forces, and the
alert quote included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons
end quote. All right, I want to explain what this means.
This is hundreds of airplanes potentially loaded with nukes, not
(14:31):
just a squadron. We're talking potentially the end of the
world number of airplanes. It's a pretty big fucking difference.
Speaker 7 (14:40):
Extraordinarily unusual in alarming events. From an intelligien standpoint.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Leonardprutz was, well, let's just say a little shaken by
this news.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Hmmm, wow, that would have been interesting to know at
the time.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Got to hope he wasn't drinking coffee when he read
that report, because he would have had the mother of
all spit takes. He was wondering, why the hell is
he just finding out about this now? This was information
that he needed weeks ago. He realized he had made
a decision that could have had catastrophic consequences with only
(15:16):
a tiny fraction of the picture, and even though it
turned out to be the right decision, he was pissed.
Leonard Perutz got on a soapbox about abel Archer. He
complained to any of his colleagues who would listen.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
He wasn't certain that that the community, the intelligence community,
had looked closely enough to figure out how we could
get better from this scenario.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
But nobody listened to him. They just didn't think it
was that big of a deal because even with this
new information, US intelligence still didn't know the full picture,
and they never would have if it wasn't for one
Oleg Gordievski.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Do you remember meeting the British at any point during
abel Archer exercise?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
I think I met them in the end of the
able Archer. Yes, I spoke to the to Joe Scarlets
about EVERYTHINGE Pichet experienced.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's Gordievsky. After Able Archer. Sometime in November nineteen eighty three,
he met with his I six handler, a man with
a name right out of a spy novel, John Scarlet.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Britain's an operational officer.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Wow, Gordy, fast and loose with the compliments. All of
a sudden, he handed Scarlet the urgent flash telegram he
had just received from Moscow.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
It said the American exercise may be preparation to a
sudden new play attack. When I told Joe Scarlet for
him it was important.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Soon word that a nuclear war scare may have just
unfolded under exercise. Able Archer landed on the desk of
the Iron Lady herself, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To her credit,
when she did hear what Gordievski had told John Scarlett,
she was definitely spooked. Hopefully she wasn't sipping tea at
the time, or she might have experienced the Queen mother
(17:11):
of all spit takes. See how I made a call back,
but I made a British.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
As it illized that's was a serious so the Russians
are afraid of something. They're afraid of the Strategic Defense Initiative,
and they're afraid of the ideological speeches by Reagan than shoots.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
In March of nineteen eighty four, Thatcher sent her ambassador
to Washington to communicate a warning to the US government.
Her message was this, Reagan needs to cool it with
the nukes. The Soviets nearly started a war because of
this shit. The meeting apparently did not go well. The
ambassador wouldn't tell the Americans exactly who their secret source was,
so the Reagan rep said, we're gonna keep doing peace
(17:59):
through stre thank you very much. But fine, we'll have
the CIA look into your concerns about this silly little
Able Archer stuff, since you've got you old Nikas in
a twist about it. Now, given everything we know about
Able Archer, it's pretty damn surprising that when the CIA
did look into it, they didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 9 (18:27):
So here we have all right, So this is implications
of recent Soviet military political activities, and this is the
first CIA report on what happened during the war Scan
and what happened during Able Archer.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
You remember Nate Jones are Able Archer sleuth. The document
he's holding is called the SNIE, another acronym shocker. It
stands for Special National Intelligence Estimate. It's the CIA's response
to the British request to look into Able Archer. This
top secret report was written in May of nineteen eighty four.
(19:04):
It's about six pages long. In the document, the CIA
analysts list everything unusual they've observed the Soviet Union doing
over the past six months. They talk about the construction
of new missile sites, big military exercises, and of course
the fact that during Exercise Able Archer, the Soviets escalated
their nuclear readiness. But despite listing all of these concerning things.
Speaker 9 (19:27):
Overall, our conclusion is that it wasn't very dangerous and
it was not a very big deal.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Hmm. You may be wondering, like me and anybody else
with the brain cell, how exactly is this not a
big deal? Did you watch the day after? I bet
when you're reduced to a cloud of dust drifting over
a radioactive wasteland, then you'd call it a big deal.
There's only one paragraph that details the Soviet military reaction,
(19:57):
specifically to Able Archer, about those planes in East Germany
and Poland going on high alert. So how did the
CIA explain it.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
The theory is that the Soviets are doing a massive
propaganda campaign to trick the West into thinking that they're
very scared of a preemptive nuclear strike, but that they
weren't really scared.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yes, of course, more mind games and the age of
nuclear weapons love that for us.
Speaker 9 (20:29):
The thinking goes that this campaign was to make the
West stop deploying the new missiles to Europe. Is the
reason for the campaign. That's what some people believed.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You can tell what Nate makes of this theory, but
it wasn't altogether implausible. The idea was if the Soviet
leaders were very public about their fear of nuclear war
with the United States, then American and European citizens would
freak out. They would call on NATO to take the
Persian two and Cruise missiles out of Europe, and that
would be a win for the Soviets, some successful mind fuckery.
(21:05):
The SNIE report is confident in this propaganda theory. They
don't waiver. They even say, and I quote, we cannot
at this point conduct a detailed examination of how the
Soviets perceived recent NATO military activities. But even so, we
are confident the Soviets do not fear a military clash
with the United.
Speaker 9 (21:23):
States, so I think they might be writing to a conclusion.
So the conclusion is that there's no real danger. Reagan's
policy is working, putting more nuclear weapons into Europe is
a good idea, and the Soviet reaction to able Archer
and the broader war scare can't be real. So therefore
(21:44):
it's just propaganda.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Now this report, it's talking about what the CIA has
seen the Soviet military do. It doesn't cite Gordievski's account
of the KGB flash telegram that he says he received,
and apparently that's because the CIA doesn't know exactly who
Gordievski is. Six can't just say, yeah, we got a
guy on the inside. His name is Oleg. He wears
(22:09):
a fake go tee and a wig, because there was
always the chance that Oleg's double agent super secret status
could get back to Russia if the CIA had a
mole oo foreshadowing. So the CIA doesn't consider Gordievsky's story
when they write the SNIE. Maybe they thought the source
(22:32):
was a plant. Maybe they thought he was just another
victim of the Soviet leader's propaganda or and this is
the explanation that involves the least amount of tinker tailor
shadow game hall of Mirror thinking maybe they knew that
his story made them look really, really bad. And I
only say that because of what happens next. After the
(22:55):
CIA writes this report, they need to share it with
their NATO allies since they all participated Enable Archer together.
Nate found this version of the report filed in the
State Department archives. So there are two versions of this.
Speaker 9 (23:10):
There's the version the CIA initially put out, and then
I foia the State Department and got its version, and
its version is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Nate knew there was a small chance that the State
Department's version of this document would be slightly different. Maybe
there'd be fewer redactions, or maybe there'd be some other
able Archer clue. When Nate received the State Department's version
of the SNIE, he ripped the envelope open. He quickly
(23:41):
scanned through the document and was shocked not at what
he found but what he didn't find.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
But in this version that they shared with their allies,
they cut out all mention of able Archer and so
if you compare it too, you see where the CIA
version talks about Able Archer. The version of the State
Department shared with the British and NATO allies just cutting
out and deleting the most dangerous part of the war,
scare Able Archer.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
The side by side comparison is pretty wild. Word for word,
the entire document is exactly the same until you get
to the paragraph about Able Archer in the State Department version.
It's just gone erased.
Speaker 9 (24:22):
It Actually, it comes across as kind of absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Absurd is a good word here. Let's break this down.
The British asked the CIA to check out Able Archer.
The CIA finds evidence of a Soviet military reaction to
Able Archer, but decides not to share it, going as
far as scrubbing all mention of Able Archer in the
report they give back to the British. That's not just absurd,
that's weird. And the obvious question becomes, why did they
(24:50):
do that?
Speaker 9 (24:52):
Well, I think to control the narrative, so to speak.
I think every author had their own point of view
that they wanted to convey, and they probably thought it
was true, and they took the facts that they had
from their intelligence and twisted the conclusions about the facts
to advocate what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The CIA, the analysts who are involved in that estimate
have a vested interest in protecting their own reputations. Nobody
wants to say they got it wrong, right. I don't
want to turn that into like some great conspiracy theory.
That's just that's human nature. It's really hard to get
people to re examine their opinions at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Everyone has a dog in the fight, and those stakes
really come down to this question of whether the people
who were charged with managing the arms race, whether those
people were competent and responsible, or whether they were just
like everybody else and bumbling their way through. And so
(26:01):
there is an enormous incentive for people to say it
wasn't that bad, because if it was that bad, then
that discredits their claimed expertise.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And we all know there is literally nothing worse in
the world than having your expertise discredited. I mean, I
can't think of anything worse. I mean, it seems like
there should be something, I just can't think of it.
(26:36):
Oh well, able archer would become a hot button issue
and create a divide in the intelligence community. It would
separate people into two passionate camps, people who bought into
the propaganda theory and people who believed that able Archer
was a catastrophic near miss. The official CIA party line
(26:57):
was the propaganda theory. That thing really had happened. They
were happy to shove it under the rug. Big fuck up. Nope,
not us. We never make mistakes. And I know you're
going to try to bring up the Iran thing and
the Congo thing and the Chili thing, but we're not
talking about those right now. But walking through the halls
of the Pentagon was a particular US intelligence official who
(27:19):
just wasn't buying the propaganda theory, propaganda, and he would
not remain quiet.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
My father was a unique man. He was full of
energy and passion and love.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This is John Perutz again talking about his father, Lieutenant
General Leonard Perutz.
Speaker 6 (27:46):
He was a great man, guys. I mean I miss
him every day.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
John, like his father, is an intelligence officer. He works
at the DIA.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
As the director of the Defense Debriefing Service DIA.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
I'm responsible for.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
A global force posture that conducts strategic debriefings and interrogation
missions for DIA. It's human intelligence and beyond.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
That I can't really tell you a whole lot more.
I'm sorry, that's okay, John.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
A few years after Able Archer, Perutz was home from Germany,
now the director of the DIA, and one day he
was told a story of a mysterious MI six source
who claimed that in nineteen eighty three, the Soviet leadership
believed NATO was using a military exercise as cover for
a nuclear attack.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
When he substantiated it, I mean then for Manny Perutes,
the wheels came off, he said, you know, you got
to be kidding me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Peruts was stunned and furious. This was the side of
the able Archer store. Sorry, he had never even known
KGB paranoia, fear and Operation Ryan. Put that together with
what Perots knew about Soviet military action, and you've got
yourself a saucy tango with nuclear armageddon. Oh. Lenny went
(29:18):
up to his attic, got his old soap box and
plopped it down right in the middle of the Pentagon.
He was like, guys, we have got to look at
this again. We didn't get it right the first time.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
He was making his point clear that we, you know,
let's make sure we learn from this, you know, and
people didn't want to hear it. Some had been on
record clearly saying, hey, that Sovie has really fear never
feared us. We've looked at it more than once, and
we stand by our view that they didn't fear first
strike by the United States, and I don't doubt for
(29:54):
one minute that was their professional belief.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
But this time Leonard Peruts wasn't going to let it go.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
I think at that point, Dad, it said, you know,
I got it. I'm leaving. I gotta go on record.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
When Leonard Perutz retired from his job as the director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency in January nineteen eighty nine,
he did so with guns ablazing. He wrote a letter
his final parting shot. Listen here, you motherfuckers. Now, I'm joking.
Obviously this is the honorable Leonard Peruts after all, But
(30:32):
the letter is badass. Leonard wrote his whole story. He says,
here's what happened during Abel Archer. I didn't have the
information I needed. If I did have it, I'm not
sure what decision I would have made. Does that not
scare you all as much as it scares me? He
ends the letter by asking an ominous question, what would
have happened that day. If I had made the other decision.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
I read the letter that my father wrote, just saying, hey,
what if, And I don't think he contended that nuclear
war It certainly would have happened, But the notion that
we would have inadvertently increased the likelihood that it could
happen was the problem. You might want to look into
this yet again, because it's too important not to.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
On the day of his retirement, he blasted this memo
out to anybody and everybody who had the security clearance
to read it, and truth be told, most of the
recipients were not interested. The institutional wisdom was let sleeping
able archers lie, if you get my meaning. But finally
he caught someone's attention.
Speaker 9 (31:40):
Essentially, that memo spurred the PIFFYAB of presidential Organization to
undertake this large, very large task.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
That's Nate Jones again, ever, sleuthing behind the able archer scenes.
PIFYAB is another wonderful acronym short for President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory.
The PIFYAB is a panel of citizens appointed by the President,
who by now was George Bush Senior. It's important to
note these people are not intelligence professionals. They're not even
(32:11):
necessarily government people. They're an oversight committee of political scientists, historians,
and lawyers who get special security clearance to access all
the government's juicy secrets. When they received Leonard Perutz's letter
in nineteen eighty nine, they read it with as much
urgency as Perots had written it. They were terrified by
the tale he told, and since they were unencumbered by
(32:33):
CIA politics, they were going to investigate able Archer properly.
This time, the PIFYAB would spend a year digging into
able Archer. They'd analyze every report, interviewed dozens of people involved,
and compile it all together in a highly classified, one
hundred page report build to the brim with government secrets.
(32:59):
The study was highly restricted, regardless of security clearance. Only
those who absolutely needed to know got to read it.
But even intelligence professionals love a little juicy GUS people
started whispering. The rumor was that this PIFYAB report was
really critical of operational mistakes, and that it confirmed, contrary
(33:19):
to the SNIE, that we may have been frighteningly close
to an all out war in nineteen eighty three. And
even though almost nobody could actually read the Pifyab report.
This rumor mill elevated it to a kind of mythical status. Now,
certain intelligence officials were questioning the conventional wisdom. If the
(33:40):
Piffy Ab allegedly said that Able Archer was a disaster,
maybe it really was a near miss. Now at this point,
Leonard Prutz was running up and down the halls of
the CIA screaming, I told you so well. I mean,
I can't verify that he actually did that, but it's
what I would have done, so I guess I'm just projecting.
Speaker 10 (34:00):
I had heard of it in passing, but I'd never
gotten into it any depth.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
I just knew that people talked about it.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Listeners, Meet Ben Fisher.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
My name is Ben Fisher.
Speaker 10 (34:13):
I shd arts the German spelling, and I worked for
the Central Intelligence Agency for over thirty years.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Ben wasn't involved in the CIA's initial Able Archer investigations
at that time. He had a very different job at
the CIA.
Speaker 10 (34:30):
I was undercover for a number of years, about fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Pretty exciting. Right in the nineties. Been left the undercover
world for a much quieter life as a CIA historian,
and that's when he decided to look into Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
There were differences of opinion.
Speaker 10 (34:46):
The issue had never really been resolved to everyone's satisfaction,
and so that's what I set out to do.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
When I started the research.
Speaker 10 (34:57):
Colleague of mine got me aside and he said, I
want you to to know that this is a very
controversial issue within the intelligence community. That's not just the CIA,
that's also the Pentagon State Department, and people staked out
diametrically opposed opinions on this episode. And he said, no
(35:18):
matter what you find, you're going to offend one side
or the other, and it's going to hurt your career.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
That didn't really FaZe Ben as far as he was concerned.
As an historian. He was already in the sunset of
his career.
Speaker 10 (35:30):
Which of course is the beauty of being on the
history staff. You don't have anything to risk. You can
reach your.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Own conclusions and write it up and let people deal
with it.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Ben began his research knowing that he eventually planned to
publish his work publicly. He was careful to use only
declassified sources. He did not read the PIFIAD report, but
even so he was terrified by what he found.
Speaker 10 (35:57):
It was very disturbing, and it led me to believe
that this was a very serious matter.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Ben didn't think his CIA colleagues had gotten it right
in the eighties. From what he could tell, the CIA
had underestimated the Soviets fear. It was very possible Able
Archer was a big deal. After all.
Speaker 10 (36:18):
I will say that on several occasions, people much higher
up the food chain than I called me up or
asked me to come and see them, and they said,
I want you to know that I thought this warscare
thing was a bunch of nonsense for a long time,
and then I read your monograph and I decided I've
changed my mind. I think it was a serious matter
and it deserves more attention than it has received.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
The CIA published Ben's work in nineteen ninety eight. They
held a conference invited academics and intelligence officials. The story
of the Able Archer war scare left the obscurity of
classified government archives. Now it was.
Speaker 10 (36:56):
Public, and a lot of people then decided to take
a second look at the issue. And so I think
that I take credit for encouraging other people to go
beyond where I was able to go.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
By the early two thousands, the Able Archer myth had
gone through a transformation of sorts a glow up, as
the kids say. Between whispers about the PIFYABS findings and
Ben Fisher's work, the propaganda theory receded into the background.
The intelligence community had come around. Many officials in the
US government now believed that able Archer was a truly
(37:33):
dangerous near miss. Plus, any CIA folks who had been
in power during Abel Archer had long since retired or
passed away. Basically, by the two thousands, nobody was trying
to diminish the importance of Able Archer. Not anymore. But
the thing about mysteries is that they have a tendency
(37:56):
to linger unless there's one hundred percent in controvertible, undeniable proof.
Some needling sleuth with a taste for CIA intrigue is
sure to come along and start asking questions again. Yep,
I'm talking about my main man, Nate Jones, or, as
I like to call him, Freedom of Information Act Guy.
Speaker 9 (38:18):
The government's telling me, no, you can have the documents,
and I want the documents.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Does that sound like the kind of guy who's gonna
let the piffy ab the holy Grail of able Archer
reportage sit untouched in a dusty Manila folder. Somewhere forever,
of course, not so.
Speaker 9 (38:34):
This one was a slobber knocker, just a big, long,
nasty fight.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Nate knew the piffy AB could contain information that wasn't
found in Fisher's reports or the SNIE, information that may
lay the mystery of able Archer to rest once and
for all. He had to get it. It wouldn't take
long for the Pifyab report to become Nate Jones white Whale.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
I filed a foyer for that pretty quickly. It went nowhere, weighted, weighted, weighted.
That filed my other foyas, and eventually I started bugging
them and calling them and saying what is going on?
And they kind of politely but kind of not said no, listen,
(39:23):
we're not doing one review. It has to be reviewed
by essentially six seven eight agencies.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Something to understand about the Pipeab report. It was special
because it was comprehensive. It used reports and sources from
more than a half a dozen agencies, and that, of
course made it nearly impossible to declassify.
Speaker 9 (39:44):
There's diplomatic sources, there's satellite sources, there's Stigan sources, there's
CIA sources. It's hard enough to get for example, one
five page document with only CIA equities reviewed.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
That's years, so you.
Speaker 9 (39:58):
Can imagine one hundred document with equities of seven agencies.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
It's not that the pitheapp wouldn't get declassified, it's just
that it might take so long that by the time
it was declassified, Nate would very likely be dead.
Speaker 9 (40:12):
So we were in big trouble.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But Nate wasn't the only one interested in the mythical
and mysterious events of Able Archer. Other historians were probing too,
But instead of trying to crack open the US government's files,
they were looking east.
Speaker 11 (40:33):
I was excited to try to find, you know, even
more of the picture on how we all almost perished.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And I am extremely excited to tell you what they found.
Speaker 11 (40:45):
I got my hands on a exercise report on the
entire Autumn Forge series of exercises.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Oh wow, I mean this is it.
Speaker 11 (40:54):
This is you know, this is the document. Let's see
how close we all got to blowing ourselves up.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
That's next time on Snaffo. While Nate tries to get
his pause on the Piffy App, We're gonna head over
to the Soviet block with some historical sleuthing that raises
some critical questions about those spies, oh Leg Gordievski and
Ryn are Rupp, who saved the day during Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
I won't say he's intentionally aligned.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
He might just be mistaken, or you might remember it
a certain way. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film,
Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with
Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino.
Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. It's
executive produced by me Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
(41:43):
Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
That's Fucking true story.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
This episode was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing
from me Elliott Kalen and Whitney Donaldson. Olivia Kenny is
our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional
research in fact Check by Charles Richter, Engineering and technical
direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by
Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chug. Special thanks to
(42:10):
Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstad.
Host
Ed Helms
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